by John Decure
“Ice plant,” I said, knowing where this was going. “You slipped on it.”
“With my johnson hanging out. I think the hill had just been watered. Anyway, when I slipped, I landed flat on my ass, slid about twenty feet straight down the embankment, over this retaining wall at the bottom. Came down like boom, right smack in front of those two girls walking home from school.” He shrugged, frowning. “Pretty slick, huh?”
Dale almost chuckled. “Right. They started screaming, ran off. So here I am, scrambling back up the hill, which I can’t do because it’s wet and slippery, so I gotta walk all the way around the block, way down the street then back up this steep incline to get to the Buick. A cruiser pulls up just as I get there, and here I am, drunk at three in the afternoon on a weekday.”
“What’d you tell ’em?” I asked.
“The truth. I knew I was fucked.”
He was fired the same week.
The rest of the story I knew, since I’d been involved in it. What I didn’t know was that some months ago, Dale had seen a kid Leanne used to be friends with, a girl she was on the drill team with freshman year. She came up the walk one afternoon when Dale just happened to be out front, checking the mailbox for past-due notices. Said she’d seen Leanne down here, in Christianitos, at the beach. Dale drove down a few times, hung around, tried to talk to some of the kids in the parking lot, on the pier, asking after Leanne. Most of them were beach kids, surfers, telling him to get lost, acting like he was a pervert, a dirty old man looking for a teenage girl. Aren’t we all looking for a girl, you fucking geezer, they’d say. Then he got a call from a state bar prosecutor who knew him from his DA days, wanted to help him comply with his probation. He was leery, because not too many people wanted to help him these days, but the prosecutor just happened to live in Christianitos.
“I thought, maybe this was meant to be. Maybe the time has come to redeem myself a little. Max barked out in the yard again. Dale kept gazing into empty kitchen space.”Hasn’t happened that way just yet, has it,“he said, not phrasing it as a question.
There was nothing to say for now. Dale looked wiped from recounting his story, and when he excused himself to use the facilities, his back looked stiff and his shoulders hunched forward like an old man’s. Max was still agitated, and I took Dale’s glass of tea to the sink and peeked out the window over the sink to see what was up. Max was there, at the base of the peppertree, balancing on one paw as if he was about to climb the trunk. A cluster of brown sparrows sat on the lowest branch, taunting him, letting him know it was their yard, too.
I rinsed the glass, then felt Carmen’s hand on my back, and turned around as her arms slid up around my neck. What is this? I wanted to ask, but those brown eyes were boring into me at close range.
“I love you,” she said. Then she kissed me, and I kissed her back, like we hadn’t done since she and Albert had come to stay with me.
The doorbell rang. “You think?” I said, hoping Leanne had returned. Carmen didn’t venture a guess as we came back through the dining room. Dale was there at the doorway, his hand on the knob.
“Mind if I get it?” His face was expectant, and I imagine he was saying a quick prayer that it was she. I told him to go ahead.
She was standing a few steps back on the porch, dark sunglasses hiding half her face. Hands on hips, head forward, aloof and insouciant, like a model at the end of the runway.
“I’m here for my husband,” Angie said to Dale. “And I don’t want no trouble about it either, old man.”
Eighteen
My father was dead before I finished the first grade, so my memories of him are brief and somewhat timeworn. A handful of his exploits are documented in the annals of surfing—albeit the back pages. The early trips with the Christianitos crew to the Islands in the fifties, the suicidal cliffhanging drops on waves too immense to ride, but then again, when you made one … The big wave guns he shaped by hand in our garage. Details in length, thickness, fin placement, rail configuration, rocker. The quiet legacy of an underground shaper who never lifted a finger to market himself, and these days, a story known only to resident old farts, surf historians, and true disciples of the Glide. But as his son, I tend to remember the less public aspects of the man. More than anything, I recall the way he carried himself. Which could sometimes surprise you.
One such time, an untalented but popular shaper from Huntington Beach had tried to put him out of business by duplicating his boards down to the last degree while gleefully knocking a bundle off the price. For a month or so it worked, and the orders for Shepard originals were way off. Something had to be done, so when my dad sent the guy an open invite through the boardbuilding grapevine, people expected a major showdown. That’s why, I was later told, the H.B. shaper pulled up in front of our house one windblown afternoon with a vanload of buddies with him as backup. And why a sizable contingent of my father’s local friends seemed to be on hand within seconds of the van’s arrival.
We were on the front porch together that day, my father reviewing my first-grade reading homework before letting me split for a bike ride. I remember watching the H.B. and Christianitos boys sort themselves out on our lawn like alley cats, lots of silent stare-downs going on. Is that guy gonna get it? I asked my dad, pointing at the offending shaper, a pudgy dude in granny shades and a tie-dyed ball cap. My father sighed, said, Nah, its not that way, then squatted and looked in my eyes as if to make sure I would remember what he was about to tell me. When your enemy shows at your doorstep, he said, you invite him in. That way he’s not your enemy, he’s your guest, get it? I didn’t, but I went along, watched him cross the porch and lay a big howzit with a powerful handshake on the H.B. guy, who looked now to be in a mild state of shock, his cap coming off out of deference to his host. My father invited him back to the garage to talk design, the guy looking relieved and just plain stoked now, the situation defused. The word later was that after his visit to my old man’s garage, the H.B. shaper got inspired and took on a new direction of his own, and a reasonably fruitful one at that. The Robert Shepard knockoffs were history
“Invite her in,” I muttered to Dale, still hanging on my father’s words from twenty-five years ago.
Angie shrugged. “Whatever.” She adjusted her black tank top, grimacing like it was cutting off her circulation, her faded jeans just as tight down below. Her movements were unself-consciously crass, but then, she was a good-looking girl who’d probably learned what she could do with her God-given gifts a long time ago. She caught me checking her out, smiled a little as she glided past me and into the short entry hall. “Where’s Rudy?”
Thirty feet outside in my yard the front gate clicked, and I saw Carlito, his head bandaged under his beret where the biker’s chain had struck him. Coming up the walk as if he were invited. No, I thought. Even my old man had his limits.
“You,” I called out the open door. “Stop. Get the hell offa my property. Now.”
He halted as if to think about it, then smiled defiantly. “Eat me.”
My fists balled, my first thought being Screw it, he’s dead, but decking this trash on my front walk in front of Carmen wasn’t much of an option, considering the level of mayhem I’d caused of late. Carlito’s remark gave me a much better idea.
“Funny you should put it that way,” I told him. “Because I can arrange it, if that’s what you want.”
“Fuck you, beach boy.” Carlito stood there, arms folded, the dumb turd not wanting to back off, but not getting my drift either. Hell, how could he?
He’d never met Max before.
I zipped around the side yard and opened the gate, waited for that big black head to poke through like a bull coming out of a rodeo chute. The dog eyed me gleefully, then fixed on the stranger on our brick walk.
“Max, get him!”
There may be no finer sight than a badass thug running for his life, except perhaps when that badass thug trips over his own two feet just before he can hurdle a fence to safety.
“Yah!” Carlito shrieked, I think as a result of his balls pancaking into the fence top. But it was hard to tell, since Max was ripping into his pant leg down below, yanking him backward and onto the ground.
“Max! Down! Down!” I shouted.
Backing off, the dog growled at me, gave me the Rottweiler version of the old stink-eye, like he wanted to know why I was cutting short the fun.
“Good boy. Let’s go.” I stuck him around back again, the big head drooping between his shoulders as the wooden gate closed.
Angie was attending to Carlito at the gate. His pant leg was shredded, but I didn’t see any blood. He was covering his nuts with both hands, moaning into the brick.
“You prick, we could sue you for that,” she said.
“Go ahead, sue me. I’m a lawyer.”
“Your mutt attacked him. I saw it.”
“He was on my property against my wishes. That’s called trespassing.”
“Look at his chinos. They’re ruined.”
“They didn’t fit him anyway. Too big.”
Carlito was having difficulty getting his wind back. “He’s hurt,” Angie said. “Fucking King Kong mutt almost killed him.”
“Not exactly. Your boy is just out of breath from polishing his jewels on the fence post.”
“It’s the dog’s fault, man.”
“Really. I’ll bet your boyfriend wasn’t a hurdler on the high school track team, was he?”
Her face tightened into a scowl. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Right. And you’re not after Rudy’s money.”
“And you are an asshole. Just lemme see him.”
I stood over her, casting a shadow on Carlito, who was starting to breathe more normally. I said, “No. Tough guy goes in the car first, and he stays there during the entire visit, understand?”
“Yessuh, meesta lawya,” she said like a snide servant.
I opened the gate first, then reached down and hiked Carlito to his feet, plucked his beret out of the shrubs lining the fence and propped it on his dome. His head bandage was coming loose at the bottom, white tape jutting out like broken spokes on a wheel. I slung his arm over Angie’s shoulder, stood back and watched her help him back to her car, a brand-new black two-door Lexus she’d probably purchased with whatever they’d found in Rudy’s safe-deposit box.
“They’re awake,” Carmen said when I came back inside. “Max’s barking did it.”
“He was a little upset,” I said.
“Is that guy all right?” Looking toward the street.
“Yeah, unfortunately.”
Dale was in the living room, sitting close to Rudy. Albert was curled up in the leather easy chair, still groggy from his nap. “Someone’s here to see you, buddy,” Dale told Rudy. Turning to me. “J., you think we should let her see him? I mean, with his daughter on her way here today?”
Rudy’s head jerked oddly when Dale mentioned his daughter, and for a moment he seemed more fully alert. Then that hint of a silly grin crept back onto his face. “Where’s my daughter?”
I told him she wasn’t here yet, just as Carmen led Angie into the living room, where she stopped by the big window. “Hey, papa. How’s my big daddy?” A plastic smile clicking on.
“Angie?” He was on his feet, Dale rising beside him, awkwardly standing by. She stayed where she was, though.
“Wanna come home with me now, papa?”
Rudy shook his head.
“Why not?”
“J.,” Dale said, “we can’t let this happen.”
“Rudy,” I said, “Kimberley is coming here to see you, later today. Why don’t you stick around a little longer, until she gets here.”
Angie turned on the charm. “I’m leaving now, papa. Right now. You coming?”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Just wait until you see Kimberley, Rudy,” I said. “Then if you still want to go with Angie, we’ll give her a call.”
Rudy paused, his eyes meeting mine. “Okay.”
“Huh,” Angie muttered. “Call me, my ass. That’s bullshit, daddy, they won’t call me. You wanna come home wit me, we do it now, that’s it.”
Angie and I were shoulder to shoulder with Rudy now, like bodyguards. “I … think I wanna go home,” Rudy said slowly, as if he knew what he was saying.
“J.,” Dale said.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, Rudy—”
“Let him go,” Carmen said from the doorway.
Dale’s face went a shade lighter. “What?”
“I think you should let him go.” Carmen folded her arms. “She’s his wife, and you can’t keep him against his will. He says he wants to go, you need to let him go.”
“Car,” I said, not sure what I was hearing.
“J., trust me on this. I think I’m right.”
Angie nodded. “Fuckin A, the lady’s making a lotta sense to me.” Walking over to take Rudy by the hand, leaving Dale marooned between the couch and coffee table.
“Bye-bye,” Albert called softly from his chair. Rudy turned and waved meekly.
Something felt wrong, but I couldn’t place it. All I could do was stand by as Carmen handed Rudy his gym bag, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before Angie whisked him outside.
“God,” Dale said. “This is awful.”
But I know Carmen’s instincts for people to be very good, and I wanted to know what she’d seen that Dale and I had obviously missed.
She raised an eyebrow when I asked. “Know what first got my attention? The crosswords. I know you never bother with them, J.” Then she nodded at Dale. “Apparently, neither do you.”
Dale said he didn’t get it. “Well,” she said, “I like doing the one in the newspaper every night, before I go to bed. It helps relax my mind. So, the last week, with you and Rudy here, too, it was starting to bug me. I’d flip to the crossword and it would be done already. Wait a sec.” She slid into the dining room, where I could hear a cabinet door open and close. Then she came back in carrying an armful of half-folded newspapers from the recycling pile I keep, selected a few pages at random, and held out the solved puzzles.
“Rudy was doing the crosswords,” I said.
“So what?” Dale said.
“He’s supposed to be suffering from dementia.”
“Yeah, but how do you know he can’t still do crosswords?” Dale said.
“It’s not just that,” Carmen said. She told us the crosswords had got her thinking, so the last few days, she’d concentrated on watching Rudy’s behavior when he thought no one else was looking. “The only times he exhibited true signs of dementia were when we were with him,” she said. “But when he thought he was alone he seemed to act more normal. I even caught him watching 60 Minutes a few nights ago.”
“But why would he fake it?” Dale said. “That girl is still out for his money regardless.”
Carmen admitted she didn’t know.
Something I’d just seen bothered me. “I’ll tell you what got him out the door right there,” I said. “Did you notice, as soon as I mentioned Kimberley showing up here, he seemed to get hot on leaving.”
“That’s right,” Carmen said.
“I did notice that,” Dale said. “But why would he want to avoid seeing her?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “If she ever shows her face around here we’ll ask her.”
“Well, I’ve got to follow them,” Dale said. “We know they want to legally rob him, but they could hurt him, too.”
“Let him go, Dale,” I said. “Whatever he’s up to, it’s his decision.”
“I don’t buy that,” Dale said. “I think he’s just confused. Horribly confused. And he needs me.” Dale lowered his gaze. “As you both know by now, the last person who really needed me was in for a major letdown. I’m not going to let that happen again.”
“Dale, she’s your daughter,” Carmen said. “Not a mixed-up client.”
“Big difference,” I said.
“Oh
, really? I don’t see how.” His voice quivering.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s your call.”
Carmen went upstairs to gather Dale’s things, brought them down in a small suitcase I no longer used. Dale and I tried to make a plan, agreeing that they wouldn’t be headed for the savings and loan this afternoon—they’d never make it by the five o’clock closing time. He knew Rudy’s home address, had copied it from Rudy’s expired driver’s license one evening while the old man was taking a bath. We figured that Angie would take him home tonight, then maybe get him to an unscrupulous M.D. in the morning, someone who, for a sweet cash payment, would sign off on a document declaring Rudy incompetent. That would pretty much pave the way for Angie to get power of attorney over his finances. It was the simple step Bobby Silver should have taken in the first place, but that day at the law center they’d been too greedy and impatient to make a more intelligent play for the money.
“I don’t know what you think you can do for him,” I told Dale. I also seriously feared for his safety if push came to shove with Carlito and him. But I didn’t tell him so; he knew he’d be in danger.
He smiled like a fatalist. “Don’t know what I can do either, but I do know I’ve got to do something. ’Know what? I feel better already.”
Carmen and I mustered a pair of thin smiles between us. Then Carmen wished Dale good luck. I told him to stay in constant touch, to call me collect whenever and wherever he had a need.
“I was wondering,” he said to me. “Could you do me a favor?”
“You got it.”
“If you could go down to the pier for me every now and then, keep an eye out for Leanne.”
I hadn’t seen that one coming. “Sure, Dale.”
“Who knows, maybe she’ll come back by here again,” he said.
Fat chance. “Maybe.”
